Saccata Quartet - Septendecim LP

Saccata Quartet are Nels Cline, Chris Corsano, Darin Gray and Glenn Kotche. On June 28, the band share their first album together, Septendecim, on We Jazz Records, with their live debut to follow on June 30th at Wilco's Solid Sound Festival in North Adams, Massachusetts. Painting a dense sonic texture on a broad canvas, the albums four deep cuts envelop the listener much like the trillions of cicadas predicted to appear across the US en masse around the time of the album launch as two broods of the species emerge for the first time since 1803 .

While Saccata Quartet's music could probably well be called free jazz, drone, dark ambient, post-noise or kosmische-noir, it should not be labeled too rigorously under any one of those banners. As a work of four lauded instrumentalists, the album refreshingly makes instrumentation seem like a secondary concern. Their sound, be it loud and undeniably wall-like, or hazy and quiet, almost fog-like, comes from a place of democratic free expression of four musicians coming together on their own terms, not limited by a band formation or deadlines for an album timeline.

That this album exists, then, is a small miracle, as the "nymph" of this release has taken its sweet time to hatch. In some way, "Septendecim" by Saccata Quartet already started to take shape around the time of the last big cicada migration, close to two decades ago. In both cases, "why now?" feels like a logical but also a somewhat pointless question. It's just nature taking its course.